Metro Matters

How Albany Avoids Stand On Abortion

By JOYCE PURNICK

Published: December 16, 1996

Yesterday, a handful of reporters engaged in a useful exercise that every member of the New York's Legislature has managed to evade. At a news conference about late-term abortions held by Planned Parenthood of New York City, the journalists questioned a medical expert and three women who underwent the procedure.

That's all. Questions and answers. Nothing fancy. Elementary, one would think, surely for legislators considering a bill outlawing the controversial medical procedure. But it is not elementary for the New York State Legislature. Last summer, the Republican-led State Senate approved a bill banning the procedure without holding a hearing. And now, in an apparent effort to placate abortion opponents, especially the Roman Catholic Church, the Democratic-controlled Assembly is poised to raise this politically volatile issue at the special legislative session that starts tomorrow. Then, after limited debate, the Assembly will probably vote no.

The script, written by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, looks like this: Mr. Silver will let a Democratic foe of abortion introduce a bill to ban a form of late-term abortion. The Assemblyman, Eric N. Vitaliano of Staten Island, will introduce the proposed abortion ban as an amendment to a measure on another subject -- probably school governance. That will let Mr. Silver exercise his powers and rule that the proposed amendment is not germane to the school bill and therefore it cannot ''amend'' that bill.

Then, lawmakers will ostensibly debate the Silver ruling, but they will really conduct an inevitably emotional floor debate on the sensitive issue of what the medical profession calls an intact dilation and evacuation and what opponents call a partial birth abortion. The legislators will not hear from doctors, ethicists, priests, rabbis, proponents, opponents. They will hear only from one another. And then, because Mr. Silver controls the Assembly majority, they are likely to back his ruling and end the debate, along with the prospects of an informed vote on late-term abortions.

THIS does not seem to be the most admirable way to make law. Indeed, people on both sides of this issue -- people who rarely agree on anything -- are critical of the Assembly maneuver. ''It's sad, whether you are for or against the issue,'' Guy V. Molinari, the Borough President of Staten Island, said yesterday. ''It trivializes it. I am admittedly pro-life, but this is a total charade.''

Alexander C. Sanger, president of Planned Parenthood of New York City, complained that ''grandstanding on the floor of the Assembly is not debate.'' Mr. Sanger might be expected to applaud the Speaker's tactic because it nearly guarantees that the measure will be stalled. But he is not so sure.

''I can never predict what can happen in an abortion vote,'' Mr. Sanger said in his Bleecker Street office. He would prefer a substantive discussion on what he termed ''an extraordinarily complex procedure, medically and ethically.''

Under the late-term method -- so grim-sounding that even a gynecologist at the news conference, Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, pointedly refused to describe it -- the fetus is partly extracted from the birth canal, feet first, and the brain is suctioned to allow the rest of the fetus to pass through.

The women who discussed their experiences at the Planned Parenthood news conference each underwent that procedure because doctors told them that their babies were so impaired that they would not live long outside the womb. The severe abnormalities ranged from heart defects and a missing kidney to the development of a brain outside the skull.

THE women could not get abortions under current New York law because their pregnancies were too advanced; abortions are banned in New York after 24 weeks of pregnancy, unless the life of the mother is at stake. Affluent enough to travel and in a position to determine where to travel, two got their abortions in the Netherlands, one in Colorado. Their concern, they said, is that even more restrictive legislation will subject more women to the closed doors that they encountered. ''My own country let me down,'' said Donna Schragis of Manhattan, who went to Amsterdam for a late-term abortion nine years ago. ''I hope that doesn't happen to other women. What is being debated now would make more women go through what I went through.''

President Clinton, defending his veto of a bill banning a kind of late-term abortion, emotionally voiced his concern about women who risked losing their ability to give birth again if they do not get abortions. He indicated that he would consider a compromise measure allowing the procedure if the pregnancy threatened a woman's health.

Foes of late-term abortions contend that the procedure can be abused by women who do not want their babies. They, too, say they can provide case studies.

Lawmakers in Albany could hear these facts and opinions and could weigh them. That is what legislators do when they consider legislation. Which in this case, they really will not.